'It's in Your Jeans' lecture on anti-sweatshop movement, Sept. 16

Loyola University New Orleans Biever Guest Lecture Series and the Department of Sociology will host a free public lecture, “It’s in Your Jeans: Success and Failure in the Anti-Sweatshop Movement,” on Wednesday, Sept. 16, at 7:30 p.m., in Monroe Hall’s Nunemaker Auditorium, on Loyola’s main campus.

Robert J.S. Ross, Ph.D., author of “Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops,” will present the lecture on the history of sweatshops, their decline, fall and return, their portrayal in the media and an analysis of the current anti-sweatshop movement and the increasing global traffic in clothing and fashion apparel between the developed and underdeveloped world.

Ross, a professor of sociology at Clark University, has authored dozens of scholarly articles, chapters and essays and has lectured widely on the topic of sweatshops around the country. As a student at the University of Michigan in 1960, Ross co-founded Students for a Democratic Society and participated in the drafting of The Port Huron Statement, the famous ideological manifesto of the New Left of the ’60s.

Professor Anthony Ladd, Ph.D., who teaches sociology in the College of Social Sciences and is coordinating the event, said Ross’ lecture is well-timed.

“In the age of globalization, when American jobs and consumer products are being increasingly outsourced to foreign lands where labor is cheap and working conditions are deplorable, Ross’ internationally recognized research on sweatshops should be of vital interest to anyone concerned with issues of labor, economic inequality, development and social justice,” Ladd said.

The mission of the Loyola Biever Guest Lecture Series is to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of students, faculty and the community by bringing distinguished individuals to campus for presentations in their respective fields.

For more information on “It’s in Your Jeans,” contact sociology professor Anthony Ladd at 504-865-3640 or aladd@loyno.edu. For more information on the College of Social Sciences, contact Catherine Koppel in the Office of Public Affairs at 504-861-5448 or ckoppel@loyno.edu.